Exhibiting Disability: Perspectives and Practice

As an aspect of artistic practice as well as human and social narrative, disability is a complex and varied subject with which museums and galleries can actively engage through curatorial programming.  This panel convenes scholars and practitioners who work at the intersection of disability studies and culture to share case studies and explore the conceptual, ethical, and practical considerations of presenting disability-related content in cultural spaces and online.  Professor Mara Mills will moderate a discussion featuring curator Amanda Cachia, artist Park McArthur, and Beth Ziebarth, the Director of the Smithsonian Institution Accessibility Program.   Please join us and add your voice to this dynamic dialogue.

Location: New Media Theater in the Sackler Center for Arts Education, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.  The Guggenheim Museum is located at 1071 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10128.  Please enter the Sackler Center on 89th Street, close to Fifth Avenue.

Registration:This event is free of charge but space is limited.  Please register by selecting a ticket above, or by sending an email to museumaccess@gmail.com, or calling (212) 570-7789.  In your email, please feel free to include a note about topics you would like to see addressed during this session.  

Accessibility: The New Media Theater is equipped with an infrared assistive listening system and is accessible to people who use wheelchairs.  To request accommodations such as ASL Interpretation or CART, please contact museumaccess@gmail.com.

About the Panelists:

Park McArthur was born in 1984 in North Carolina and lives and works in New York City. She graduated from Davidson College in 2006 (B.A.) and The University of Miami in 2009 (M.F.A.). She attended The Whitney Independent Study Program in 2010-2011 and 2011-2012, and The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2012. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Yale Union, Portland, OR and Galerie Lars Friedrich, Berlin, Germany.  McArthur’s art has been presented at ESSEX STREET, New York; the Kitchen, New York; at Laurel Gitlen Gallery, New York; Catherine Bastide, Brussels; at Sculpture Center, New York; and at the ICA Philadelphia.  She has presented papers and screenings at the Society of Disability Studies in Orlando; at the University of the Arts, London; at SUNY Stonybrook; at The Graduate Center CUNY, New York; and at Hunter College, New York. She is an active member of New York City's disability community and has worked on the Caring Across Generations campaign for domestic workers rights and in-home assistive care services for people with disabilities.

Amanda Cachia is an independent curator from Sydney, Australia and is currently completing her PhD in Art History, Theory & Criticism at the University of California, San Diego. Her dissertation will focus on the intersection of disability and contemporary art. Cachia completed her second Masters degree in Visual & Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco in 2012, and received her first Masters in Creative Curating fromGoldsmiths College, University of London in 2001. She held the position Director/Curator of the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada from 2007-2010, and has curated approximately 30 exhibitions over the last ten years in various cities across the USA, England, Australia and Canada. Her writing has been published in numerous exhibition catalogues, Canadian Art, Art Monthly Australia, and peer-reviewed academic journals such as Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, and Disability Studies Quarterly.  She has lectured and participated in numerous international and national conferences and related events within the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe, and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works grant and Canada Council for the Arts. Cachia is a dwarf activist and has been the Chair of the Dwarf Artists Coalition for the Little People of America (LPA) since 2007. She also serves on the College Art Association’s (CAA) Committee on Diversity Practices (2014-2017). For more information, visit www.amandacachia.com

Mara Mills is an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, working at the intersection of disability studies and media studies. She is currently completing a book (On the Phone: Deafness and Communication Engineering) on the significance of deafness and hardness of hearing to the emergence of “communication engineering” in early twentieth-century telephony. Articles from this project can be found in Social Text, differences, the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, and The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. Her second book project, Print Disability and New Reading Formats, examines the reformatting of print over the course of the past century by blind and other print disabled readers, with a focus on Talking Books and electronic reading machines. Mills is the co-editor of a recent issue of Grey Room on the “audiovisual.” Mills received B.A. degrees in Biology and Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, followed by an M.A. in Biology and Ph.D. in History of Science from Harvard. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the DAAD, and the IEEE. In 2011, she was the Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar at Media@McGill.

Beth Ziebarth has a personal interest and professional responsibility in advocacy for people with disabilities. She currently serves as the director of the Smithsonian's Accessibility Program.In her position, Ms. Ziebarth develops and implements accessibility policy and guidelines for the Institution's 19 museums, the National Zoo, and nine research centers, ensuring that the Smithsonian's 30 million annual visitors experience a welcoming environment that accommodates individuals of all ages and abilities. Ms. Ziebarth develops partnerships between the Smithsonian and disability, educational, and cultural organizations in order to increase the Institution's audience of people with disabilities. She provides technical assistance to Smithsonian units on facility, exhibition and program accessibility issues and coordinates with Smithsonian administration to resolve formal and informal accessibility complaints. Ms. Ziebarth has been a Smithsonian staff member for over twenty years.